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Yosemite Cup
Mix four tablespoonfuls of strawberry syrup with two tablespoonfuls of lime juice or the juice of two fresh limes. Put into a glass nearly filled with cracked ice and add Apollinaris. Stir well and serve with straws.
A soda-fountain cooler from the dry years: three ingredients, one glass, no shaking. The only thing standing between it and a modern kitchen is the vocabulary.
- ApollinarisA naturally carbonated mineral water from the Ahr valley in Germany, ubiquitous in American bars and fountains around 1900 and still bottled. Any strongly carbonated mineral water works; the point is a mineral bite and hard bubbles, so avoid soft seltzer if you can.
- Strawberry syrupThis means fountain syrup, not jam sauce and not the thin drizzle sold for pancakes. Period fountain syrups were heavy sugar syrups, thick enough to coat a spoon, though proportions of sugar to strained fruit juice varied from formula to formula. Bottled Italian-style soda syrups are the closest ready equivalent.
- ProportionsFour tablespoons of syrup is a quarter cup, and two tablespoons of lime juice is one fluid ounce, which is about what two small limes give. The recipe treats the two measures as interchangeable, so taste the mixture before it goes over the ice.
- Cracked iceIce broken to irregular pieces the size of a walnut, not cubes and not crushed snow. It chills fast without diluting the drink to nothing, which matters when the only dilution is a splash of mineral water.
- Glass sizeThe recipe specifies only a glass 'nearly filled with cracked ice', which suggests a tumbler on the larger side. Mix the syrup and juice, pour over the ice, then top with the mineral water; the recipe yields one drink.
- StirringThe recipe says to stir well; use a long spoon to draw the syrup up through the ice, bearing in mind that prolonged stirring will cost some of the carbonation.
Books like this one borrowed the whole grammar of the bar: the "cup," the cracked ice, the straws, the imported mineral water poured over syrup. A cup, in nineteenth-century drink terminology, was a fruit-and-wine punch served cold in quantity; here the wine is simply removed and the fruit syrup carries the drink alone. The naming is patriotic-scenic rather than geographic — Yosemite had been a national park since 1890. Apollinaris water was an expensive imported branded product, advertised heavily in the United States, and calling for it by name signalled that the abstainer's drink was to be taken as seriously as anything mixed with spirits.